and some of my other hobbies too

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Now that we’re using the sofa more I thought it would be pleasant to have an ottoman too. I toyed with the idea of finding a old ottoman and reupholstering it. This is a great plan but I couldn’t seem to locate any old footstools at any of our local thrift shops. Even a great bargain on ebay for furniture gets eaten away when you have to pay for shipping and handling so I didn’t even look there.

I did come across this one at furniturecentral.com, which was on clearance. It was discounted from $175.99 to $49.00. The clincher was that shipping was only $10. They had an added discount of %20 at the moment which basically took care of the shipping. So my price out the door was about $52.

As pictured on the website it is a little too tall, but I thought I could replace the legs and that would bring it to the height I needed. I ordered it and it arrived a few days ago. It is just what I wanted!

I have enough of the sofa slipcover fabric to cover it. Making a slipcover for it will be very easy and fun!

I also bought pillow forms and a bright coordinating fabric to make a couple of throw pillows, another easy and fast project that should go quickly!

Friday, July 28, 2006

I had a great time at Moonridge Zoo. We visited the animals, got an autograph from my favorite TV star, and supported a great cause. Here are Marty and I keeping cool under our sun hats.

But what else have I been doing since then. Well, mostly working it seems and what little free time I have has been diverted recently to my other favorite hobby, art. I have been studying a digital art tutorial CD I bought a few months ago and practicing Photoshop digital painting techniques. I bought the tutorial online at www.digitalarttutorial.com. It’s a series of quicktime movies that take you through the creation of the picture on the cover of the CD. Though its kind of hard to follow at times, I have gotten a lot of valuable tips and techniques out of it. It also assumes you have a good working knowledge of Photoshop.

Here is my attempt so far at applying the techniques to my own art work. I started with this sketch.

Then I started picking out sections to fill with a flat color. The colors in the hair are really just place holders, that is why the colors are so bright. I forgot to take a snapshot when I finished all the flat coloring. This shot shows when I started rendering the features of his face.

The rendering of his face continues with some experiments that change the tint of the skin color. I also change the hue of the hair and darken it to give me a better feel for what the color of the skin should be.

With more detail on the face it starts to look better but there is still a lot of work to do. That’s where I am right now. It’s slow going but I’m having fun.